 Poster: A snowHead
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Hi all,
As another winter season approaches I hope I can be of help again with any winter tyre queries. I'll ensure to check in more often to get through as many questions as possible.
I wanted to let you know about a new site/blog that I've set up that might be of interest if your driving to the Alps this year and are considering winter tyres. Don't worry I'm not trying to sell you anything, there is nothing to buy through the site, no advertising... just plenty of me talking about winter tyres.
Winter tyre reviews is unique in that it combines my experience, customer feedback and tyre test report data. I've covered most of the main products on the market at the moment, I haven't wrote about every single tyre as I'd be an old man by the time I finished but I think I've got all the good ones covered.
I could really use your help too, if you've used winter tyres I'd love it if you could leave a review. Your input would be greatly appreciated and will aid people in making informed decisions about a product that can be rather costly.
Thanks again, bring on the snow!
Phill
http://wintertyrereviews.co.uk/
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I'm looking for wheels and tyres, I do want to buy some, need some advice re wheels.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Hi Phill, new car arriving in a few weeks (the new model MkIII Octavia Estate 4x4) so can you please email me a quote (jon @ thepisteoffice.com) for a set of five Conti TS850's on 16" black alloy rims 205/55 R16 91V based upon me nipping up to your place in November for you to fit. Ta, Jon
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Try again, Phill I have a vw passat all track. I'm after steelwheels or cheap alloys and winter tyres. The tyre size is 205/50/17. The spec for the wheel is 112/5 6.5j r17 et39 but would need to confirm. Not sure if spyderjon, spec would work for me too, it's a very similar car!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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I've used 2 different winter tyres over the last 3 seasons, but neither of them are in your site 
I used Conti TS830 (not the 830P) for 2 years, and Falken Eurowinter HS439 n(or 449, can't remember for sure) last year. Both in 215/55/16.
I have to say I found the Continentals significantly better than the Falkens, and longer lasting.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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jbob, I bet spyderjon, got more car for his cash  Great choice of car spyderjon, I'm sure you will be pleased with it.
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Megamum, you may be right, but I got a very good deal, and the Skoda garage in B'ham is crap, and wants silly money for their cars, plus long waiting times. I'm very happy.
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Megamum, thanks. I'll only do 7k miles a year including two Euro trips so I got a great contract hire deal though Skoda Business Direct. The 2ltr diesel is 150PSI & 50+ mpg plus it's under 130 emissions so is fully deductible & I get half the VAT back 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| spyderjon wrote: |
| Megamum, thanks. I'll only do 7k miles a year including two Euro trips so I got a great contract hire deal though Skoda Business Direct. The 2ltr diesel is 150PSI & 50+ mpg plus it's under 130 emissions so is fully deductible & I get half the VAT back |
You'll still have a chunky taxable benefit charge, though.
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Red Leon, Yup, I don't do many business miles in a year and my accountant prefers for me to buy a private car and if I do business miles to claim the mileage back from the company. He reckons this is better for my situation. Perhaps spyderjon's, sums just break in the opposite direction for his car use.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Thanks spyderjon, I'll send you something over this afternoon! jbob, I'll pm you with some details.
alex_heney, Apologies that your tyres are not reviewed, I missed out the original TS830 as Continental only produced this tyre for about 6 months. It was quickly replaced by the TS850 which was a good move as this has proven to be about the best product on the market for the last few years.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I think I'm going to plump for 2 sets of Conti TS830P, one normal set for my Subaru and the other in RF version for the BMW.
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I've moved this topic from Aprés to The Piste as it's on-topic.
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You know it makes sense.
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| jbob wrote: |
| Megamum, you may be right, but I got a very good deal, and the Skoda garage in B'ham is crap, and wants silly money for their cars, plus long waiting times. I'm very happy. |
Megamumseems I was wrong when I agreed with you. Popped into the Skoda garage this afternoon. Spec for spec the the skoda was less than a grand cheaper, I managed to negotiate a £4k discount with VW and a decent value on my VW trade in. Skoda didn't want to know about deep discounts, and was less interested in my trade in, so it worked out quite a bit cheaper. As I do 25k miles a year leasing wasn't an option. Plus I should get a better residual.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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So tyremen, what is the winter equivalent of the Cinturato P7 Blue - i.e. A-A rated and not stupidly expensive.
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Poster: A snowHead
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tyremen,
Completely agree with your write up of the vredestein quatracs. I bought some from you last year and I can't tell any difference between them and full winter tyres. Used them all summer as well and it doesn't seem to have destroyed them.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Are there off-road winter tyres ? Looking for a proper winter tyre instead of General Grabber AT2, which are fine off road but not as good as the Dunlop snow tyres on the wife's Astra in the snow. Looking for 215/60/R17.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Love my Yokohama W-Drive tyres. They stayed on all year this time and are exceptional in snow and very hard wearing.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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deerman, we've got Continental Winter Contacts in that size, although haven't done anything seriously off-road with them.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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tyremen, I've run the Hankook IceBears (225-45-17) since October last year. Total of 12000 miles, both winter and summer conditions. Stunning in the snow, no issues whatsoever in the Yorkshire Dales with wet/icy/snow/drifts. On a Mercedes C 200K estate, rear wheel tiptronic - totally did the job round here when other cars flounded. Still return 40 mpg on a run, but lose about 2mpg on poodling about. I reckon about another 6-8000 left to run judging by the wear and what's left.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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RobW, personally I wouldn't look for an equivalent of the P7 Cinturato Blue as it's a horrible tyre! It may have good label data, but it does everything else very poorly. When it comes to winter tyres you want to pretty much ignore tyre labeling as it doesn't give any indication of winter performance. The only info that is useful is the fuel efficiency and the Continental TS850 does very well in this area, however the difference in actual fuel consumption between a few label grades is very minimal.
I have serious issues with tyre labeling, my rant continues here if you're interested: http://www.tyremen.co.uk/tyres-explained/tyre-labelling.aspx
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deerman, you can get winter tyres that have light off-road capability, something like the Vredestein Wintrac 4 Xtreme is a fantastic winter product and will cope with fields and the like. At the moment there isn't a true off-road tyre that has winter capability too, they are just one of the other.
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skimastaaah, sounds like you are getting on well with your Hankook. If you get a minute to add your thoughts to the review site above it would be appreciated! Cheers, Phill.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| Quote: |
Vredestein Wintrac 4 Xtreme is a fantastic winter product and will cope with fields and the like
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Fitted these to Discovery last year and they are a fab tyre - absolutely superb in snow and ice but have been useful in muddy camping fields as well. FWIW we run them all year round and had no problems on a 1600mile round trip to Bordeaux this year. Ok may wear slightly quicker but no noise or ride issues
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The Snowtrac 3's have been great on the old Volvo got us out of Tignes last Dec after the PSB and it had put down about a meter of snow overnight 
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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I think when it comes to pure snow performance the Snowtrac is hard to beat!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I have run Nokian WRG2`s and WRA3`s on two Subarus for 3 years, and found them to be fantasic. The G2`s are being sold this weekend, after 3 seasons use, and still have another year in them, so they cost £ 83 each, and are being sold for £ 25 each. I now need 4 205 55 16 5 x 112 steel wheels for a Skoda superb 1.9 tdi 4x4, with preferably Nokians on, if you would like to quote me!
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I have run Nokian WRG2`s and WRA3`s on two Subarus for 3 years, and found them to be fantasic. The G2`s are being sold this weekend, after 3 seasons use, and still have another year in them, so they cost £ 83 each, and are being sold for £ 25 each. I now need 4 205 55 16 5 x 112 steel wheels for a Skoda superb 1.9 tdi 4x4, with preferably Nokians on, if you would like to quote me!
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You know it makes sense.
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cstreat, I'll send you a pm. Cheers
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Poster: A snowHead
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This is what I posted on tyremen, 's very useful site re the Vredestein Wintrac 4 Extreme :
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I have these on my Discovery 4 as my winter set. Sadly last Feb in Scotland all the snow was higher up and the roads were clear so I had no chance to see what they were like in the snow. They were very good on road, little noise, no increase in fuel consumption and I could not tell if wet weather braking was any different .
However I have a 1.5 mile track to where we stay in Scotland and in mud ( not deep ) they were very poor – even compared to the OE tyres – Wranglers. I always run summer and winter tyres and personally would not run these all year round if I was doing quite a lot of off roading in temperatures above 10C.
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In fact thinking about it I would not want to use these tyres in mud .
Best tyre I have found for off road - mud, wading , tracks etc and in fresh snow and very good value was the Cooper Discoverer ST - but the big chunks also meant it was lethal on compacted snow and ice hence my change to the Vredesteins ( I almost slid off a very icy track into a river so decided that the off road and fresh snow abilities were not as important as grip on other surfaces ).
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Is that the Auto Express pirelli tyre mini test? Just had a look at that and it's just comparing 3 of their products. Pirelli haven't put it forward for testing proper as they know it would get slated! It was the first 'label tyre' and was designed just to look good on the label, other performance criteria will have suffered.
Things have moved on now and recent products that have been released are good all rounders, a good example is the new Goodyear Efficient Grip Performance or Dunlop BlueResponse, both these have good label scores and work really well in a range of conditions. These are summer tyres though.
Phill
Oh and essentially you can't see those diagrams, it's not something that is published outside of comparing products within the same brand.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Another vote for the Nokian WRG2`s performance. Did most of a season with them on my scooby estate and also used for three years summer use. Light mileage so still plenty of life. Would buy again.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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tyremen, grief the last thing I thought I would be doing is posting on a winter tyres thread, since we've been using winter tyres for 20 years and have kept up with the latest technology for good reason: we spend most of the winter hucking about in the deep stuff in resort. And never used chains. But....I DO have a query. Up 'til now, all season tyres have been weak summer tyres and poor winter tyres - bad at both. Hence always having conti summers on alloy and pirelli winters on steel. And then I see the Autobild review of the Vrederstein Quadtrac3. But I inherently mistrust tyre reviews...too much at stake for the companies. How was it two years' ago that the Alpins came top but for years have been a very weak winter tyre, and same model now being ranked 4-5? All very odd. But my question is this - are the Vrederstein's a sudden breakthrough? I can see the point of different sipe pattern, but the key elements of a winter tyre are sipe pattern, width, compound, and compliance. The first two are fine, can see how vrederstein deal with those. But compound and compliance? These are inherent to a winter tyre and quite different to a summer tyre. So....are the quadtracs any good?
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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They are on my citroen c4 GP. Can't tell the difference between them and previous winter tyres on the old volvo.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Uemwmarine, ....interesting, what winter tyres did you have on the Volvo and what kind of conditions were you using them in? Thanks
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can't be certain as it was a few uears ago but I think my local chap managed to get some kuhmo winter tyres.
bit more detail the all season tyres are also better in my fwd citroen than my discovery was with just mud at2 tyres.
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| Quote: |
Up 'til now, all season tyres have been weak summer tyres and poor winter tyres - bad at both.
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We have used Goodyear Vector allseason tyres all year round on our S-max and found them massively better than summer tyres in the snow and no different for wear, fuel consumption etc, the only summer difference is less aquaplaning in rain and better grip on wet grass. Mrs T ploughed on through snow last winter that even left some 4wd stuggling.
Changing tyres for summer/winter, costs, storage etc is an expensive PIA. We'll be fitting a new pair of vectors for the front this November, even if it means binning some tyres with a bit of wear left, it's less hassle & expense than swapping summer/winter tyres.
I have left the pure winter tyres on my Transit all year and the fronts do seem to have worn quicker than usual.
In really deep, semi compact snow, the S-max with its standard 225 width tyres managed much better than the transit on narrower winter tyres as it sank in less.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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tangowaggon, ...interesting...very good comparisons and 'field experience' since you are running various combinations. I don't mind changing tyres twice a year too much - I pay for it once and have the wheels balanced before they go on, and then do one change myself. But your experience with allseasons is very interesting - the technology looks as if it is improving...thanks for the insights.....
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| valais2 wrote: |
| tangowaggon, ...interesting...very good comparisons and 'field experience' since you are running various combinations. I don't mind changing tyres twice a year too much - I pay for it once and have the wheels balanced before they go on |
I hope you meant to say "after", rather than "before" there.
It is totally pointless having them balanced just before fitting new tyres, since those will immediately throw the balance out again.
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FAQ
So where can consumers see the spider diagrams you refer to?
